I Keep Attracting the Same Type of Person Romantically and I Am Exhausted. Where Do I Even Start?

I want to reframe the question before we go anywhere with this.

Because most of the time when someone says they keep attracting the same type, the type is not really the issue. The situation is. How it starts. How it unfolds. How you end up in the same place you swore you would never be again. Different person, same script, same ending.

That was me. Not the same type of guy necessarily. But the same situation every single time. Same beginning. Same slow crash. Same ending. And for a long time I looked at the pattern and tried to analyse the other person. What was wrong with them. What I missed. What I should have seen earlier.

It took me a long time to turn the question around.

Here is the one that actually changed everything for me. If you were exactly where you wanted to be in life, your work running the way you want it to, your health where you want it, traveling, building, fully in yourself, would you be entertaining this person in the first place? If you genuinely thought highly of yourself, would you have said yes to just anyone who showed interest?

Sit with that for a second. Really sit with it.

Because for me the honest answer was no. And that answer had nothing to do with the other person. It had everything to do with where I was when I let them in. I was not full. I was not solid. And when you are not full, you do not choose from clarity. You choose from hunger. And hunger will accept things that a full person would not even consider.

And I want to be clear about what I actually mean by not full. I do not mean you need to have everything figured out before you can be with someone. Life does not work like that and that is not what I am saying.

I mean this. If you feel like you are inherently not enough, if somewhere underneath everything there is a voice that says you are too much, not enough, lucky to be chosen, grateful for the attention, you are going to make decisions from that place. And those decisions are going to keep producing the same results.

I suffered from low self esteem for a long time. And the way it showed up in relationships was very specific. If a guy thought I was cute, that felt like enough. Like physical attraction was the ceiling and everything above it, being listened to, being supported, being treated with actual respect, felt like asking for too much. Like those things were for other women. Not for me.

So I stayed in situations that gave me the ceiling and nothing else. And I called it a relationship.

The moment everything shifted for me was during my most recent breakup. I asked the guy if he thought that low of me. And then ten seconds later I stopped. Because I realised the question was wrong. It was not about what he thought of me. It was about what I thought of me. I had thought low enough of myself to stay for a year. That was not his doing. That was mine. And the moment I saw that clearly, not as a concept but as an actual fact, something shifted that I do not think is going back.

I stopped dating after that. Not as punishment. Not because I am giving up on relationships. But because I recognised that I had been hoping someone, anyone, would pick me and validate me. And that is not a foundation. That is a hunger. And feeding a hunger with the wrong thing does not make it go away. It just keeps you full enough to not deal with it.

So where do you actually start?

Not with finding a better person. With yourself first.

Sit down and ask yourself honestly how you actually see yourself. Not the version you perform for other people. Not the affirmations. The real one. The one that shows up at 2am when nobody is watching.

Then ask what you think you deserve. And I do not mean this in a you are a queen and deserve the world way. I mean it practically. Do you believe you deserve to be listened to? To be respected consistently, not just on good days? To be with someone who actually fits the life you are trying to build, not just someone who showed up when you were lonely?

And then the hardest one. Are there parts of you that have decided, quietly, that certain things are too good for you? That respect is for other people? That support is asking too much? That attention alone should be enough?

Because if the answer to any of those is yes, that is where the pattern lives. Not in the other person. In what you decided you were worth before they ever arrived.

One last thing. You do not need to be fully healed or completely sorted before you are allowed to be with someone. But you do need enough of yourself to make a decision from something other than hunger.

The person who belongs in your life, the life you are actually building not the one you are tolerating, will look very different from the ones who have shown up so far. Not because you found a better type. Because you became someone who could see the difference.

Start there.